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It’s my protest against Seahawks owner Paul Allen giving $100,000 to a fund for keeping Republicans in control of the House of Representatives. This wasn’t a contribution to influence some principled, individual Republicans–it was a contribution to keep the stinky status quo.

Maybe taking off the sticker was a dumb thing to do. I still love the Seahawks, and I’m excited about Shaquille and Shaqueem Griffin–we got the House of Griffindor in the house!–but I can’t think of any other way to register my displeasure. I suppose I could boycott Allen’s MoPop, or his Upstream Festival, but I need to do something.

Doing something physical helps: when the Seahawks got intercepted at the goal line in the 2014 Superbowl, I punched a hole in a sheetrock wall. Still have a tiny scar, but, I got over the loss way faster than my friends. A Seahawks sticker is about the only point where Allen’s business interests become tangible–in my little life, anyway.

I don’t know what Paul Allen personally believes; like many CEO’s, he gives to both political parties, and the article I read says he’s supported some progressive things. Culturally, it doesn’t seem like Trump Republicans would be a good fit.

So why support keeping the House in Republican hands? I have to believe the donation is a decision to benefit his business. Maybe he thinks Republicans will win the House. Go with winners–it just makes good business sense, right? However:

He’s supporting climate change deniers. Is his business worth more than the planet?

He’s supporting those who would end Obamacare–is his business worth more than someone like me having a shot at health care?

He’s supporting those who take extreme positions on reproductive rights. The wider abortion debate aside, the Republican House probably includes people who want no abortion for rape or incest–does he agree with those who think the sperm of rapists is sacred? Or is this just another business decision?

He’s supporting those who want to protect the president from investigation. Trump could be criminal, crazy, or even treasonous. Or not at all. The point is, Allen is supporting those who are actively trying to keep the truth from coming out. Guess that tax cut was worth it!

I suppose I unconsciously sorted billionaires into cool and uncool groups–what Bill Gates became on one hand, and what David Koch will always be on the other. Maybe the point is, if you want to be a billionaire, put those business decisions first–ahead of planet, health, women, and country.

Let’s not lie about it, thanks to current campaign finance laws, Paul Allen has a much larger voice in our democracy than I do (rest in peace, McCain-Feingold). My partner and I gave money to some local public radio stations, so we’re a bit tapped out on donations. Still, we just kicked in $12 to a fund to help Democrats take over the House. (Twelve bucks, because Seahawks fans are called “12’s”. )

Know 10,000 people who might like to join us? That’s $120,000. Maybe we can beat Paul Allen at his own game.

Go Hawks–and go 12’s!

P.S. If you can’t do $12, then maybe $2? Or, if you want to give more, choose some other amount that ends in 2. I like the idea of the staff at Swing Left scratching their heads in puzzlement–“What up with all these 2’s?” (Plus we could tell if this becomes a thing.)

Every flavor of leopard wanted to be.
Even the lazy, who only wanted to be rocks
or electrons, wanted throbbingly to be.

Each grain of sand filed a separate application;
possible dolphins sent impressive resumés.

Waves of want sloshed the darkness.
Darkness striking darkness made sparks,
and First Woman’s hand that wanted to be
grabbed the sparks and stuffed them into

her mouth that wanted to be. Instantly, salt,
garlic, and serrano peppers wanted to be.

The sparks expanding–heating–multiplying
filled to bursting her wanting belly,
but her asshole hesitated, unsure it wanted
to be, because the other non-beings
always made fun of it.

Too late! She exploded like a black plate
in an overheated kiln.

Black shards of her, white sparks
went flying off in pairs, piercing
the non-beings. A shard and spark arrowed
the leopard’s heart and it awoke, stretched,
sniffed the sudden air, alert and hungry.
Grass crashed into existence with a green yell,

then startled by its own voice,
started whispering. A hen wondered

what the hell she was sitting on, but strongly felt
she shouldn’t break it. Only First Woman
didn’t get to be. That made everyone sad—
she had the gumption to grab the fire in the first place.
It was agreed that everyone would exist for a time,
then give back their shard and spark so She could be.
But then the humans, who’d overslept and missed the meeting,

showed up and argued everyone should keep their pieces of Her,
or ok, everyone else can give theirs up and we’ll keep ours.

No dice, said the mice. Besides, we already voted. The humans
stormed out, sniffily made up a language, and wouldn’t share it.
But even the humans have to give up shard and spark until finally
She is reunited. No one knows what next. Does the whole thing start
over? Or will She walk off in search of Others of her kind,

I was cleaning house for a cultured client, with top-notch taste in music and art, who had the Music Choice classical channel on the TV. (It not only says something for Music Choice that he approved of their “hand-picked, no algorithms” playlist, but also for the endless onslaught of digital convenience, that he’s surrendered to it.) The music was accompanied by still photos and “Did You Know” facts about the composers’ and musicians’ lives.

What can be more inspiring than reading about the remarkable achievements of famous composers? Christ, just about anything, when you’re not feeling great about your life. Usually, they just give you the usual “Bartok played Bach before he could walk” stuff, which makes you wonder exactly what useful thing you’ve done with the decades of food and oxygen you’ve extracted from the planet. But on this day, they suddenly turned cruel—or crueler—with some extra comments.

On top of that, there’s scary fact of the cloud-connected TV knowing intimate and obscure details of my life. Or the alternative, which is that I’m hallucinating at work. I’m not sure which is worse.

Anyway, here are a few of the “Did You Know” spots I saw:

Yeah, I know my head is the problem. But do I ask my haberdasher for a tin-foil fedora, or my shrink for a rack of Zac?

It was the first run of the day, a yellow 2 out of lower Lynwood, right off the freeway, starting at 4am. The first stop was a nice couple, probably early 70’s, we’ll call them Henry and Mabel. The other was a single, “Lauren”, several blocks away, maybe a bit past 60. Being locals, they could, and did, discuss the state of potholes, bingo at the senior center…it was so boring, I started driving faster, just so it could end sooner.

But then the conversation took a turn when they discussed hosting students. Lauren said, “I used to do that, but I stopped after I was raped at knife point by a student.” She talked about that for a bit. I couldn’t help it, I slowed down to hear better.

Mabel sympathized: she had once had a job as a bus driver at a mental hospital, and while driving was assaulted by Jimmy, a huge, freckled, gangly, mostly gentle, but occasionally violent, client of the institution. It was still on the grounds; she got the van stopped, tried to defend herself as best she could, but was choked and sustained a broken arm. The security staff heard her honking and came running.

When Jimmy saw them, he snapped back into docility. “I be good, Mabel. Jimmy be good now.”

“Damn right you’re going to be good,” she said, as the badged apes hustled Jimmy off for an impromptu Rolfing session.

This seemed to have blown the doors of the conversation wide open. Lauren talked about her three sons, all of whom became garbage men:

“Larry had a route that went through a rich neighborhood. He used to make out like a bandit at Christmas.”

“How so?” I asked.

“Oh, some of the rich families would get drunk and fight. And then he’d score a $200 sweater from Nordstrom’s, still in the box, sitting on top of the garbage can. Stuff like that.”

Another son, she said, had a lot of sex with women on his route: “Lonely housewives. He kept a collection of dildoes on his dashboard.”

Part of what makes my life interesting is short-term gullibility. I believed her, though somewhere in the back of my mind I was trying to picture having sex while your truck is blocking the street. Henry and Mabel didn’t have much to say about that story.

Then Lauren got onto a story about a plumbing explosion at a summer cabin: “There was shit flying everywhere, shit all over the walls.”

It was getting a bit weird. And—how did the dildoes fit in (so to speak)? Would you bother with toys during quick sex? Would a garbage truck driver really sport a pastoral tableau of dildoes in the window of his truck? (For some reason, I pictured them in a dashboard display of a meadow, a pond, maybe some toy animals contentedly grazing among them.) And how many women would want to have sex with an on-duty garbageman? I was starting to wonder about Lauren’s veracity, if not sanity. I started driving faster. Fortunately, we were now headed up the badly paved road to the airport.

I tried to steer the conversation towards potholes. Sometimes these old people scare me.

The fourth of July is not my favorite holiday. I grew up with fireworks, I’ve been to public displays, and no one has ever talked about the ideals of the country, or read from the founding documents. The Fourth of July, as celebrated, seems pornographic: explosion for its own sake, disconnected from the idea or feeling it’s supposed to celebrate. An excuse to blow shit up.

On the positive side, your local car dealer has revolutionary deals, and has declared independence from high prices!

For all its faults, I feel lucky to live in this country, and last year, listening to the mind-dulling crack and thump of fireworks, I thought I would rebel, and read the Bill of Rights. It helped, a lot. There’s a core of genius and decency to this nation.

Another year, and the Fourth rolls around again. Sigh.

This year I decided to read the Declaration of Independence. Wow. In laying out the case for revolution, before the laundry list of complaints, Jefferson lands a solid left hook that knocks the divine right of kings on its ass. And once again, it worked—I felt grateful and inspired. Maybe next year when the fireworks start, I’ll read from the Federalist Papers. It’s my rejection of our annual loveless humping of the American sky.

Anyway, while doing some background reading on the Declaration, I discovered a fascinating but forgotten part of American and British history: Chirping. Normally, to sail from England to America could take 6 weeks or longer. Thus, the flow of information, as well as people and goods, was quite slow.

Enter Chirping, an ultrafast messaging system that could send short messages, or “chirps,” across the Atlantic in as little as 4 days. How did it work?

Pigeons.

Lord Evan Stone had the idea, and money, to set up a chain of a dozen or so relatively stationary ships across the Atlantic, and to train pigeons to fly between them. A pigeon can easily travel 400 miles a day at 50 miles per hour; with a quick transfer to a fresh pigeon, at least 800 miles a day was possible. Of course, messages were of necessity short, and expensive. And several pigeons had to carry the copies of the same message, because even a pigeon can have trouble finding a ship at sea. (The story of how Lord Stone got the birds to do that would be a fascinating article in its own right.) Adding to the expense was the constant need to resupply the stationary ships.

Arriving at port, the messages would then be posted publicly on a large board, unless additional fees were paid for a private delivery service. Of course, people would flock to see the Chirps, as Lord Stone intended: it was free advertising. The curious public clustered around the message board like feeding pigeons, which thus became to be known as Ye Feed. It was said that the Feed messages would travel by rumor just as a fast as by a private courier.

Interesting side note: the Chirps were originally called Coos, as the service was intended for the lovelorn gentry to send mash notes to their distant sweethearts. But as we shall see, the service soon became a channel for political bickering, or “Chirping.” I discovered a Log of Chirps between America and England (and some from France), recorded just after the Declaration of Independence arrived in London. (If King George III often seems to get the last word, it’s because he could afford more pigeons.)

Here is an excerpt:

@MaireAntoinette
TLDR

@rexGeorgeIII
This Declaration of Independence is the work of Indolent Wretches who can only Lose. I call them Lose-ers. Dolorous!

@EdwardGibbon
Too short, did not peruse.

@Phenry
Give me Liberty or give me Death!

@rexGeorgeIII
Pathetic @Phenry, your bold declaration is naught but the squawking of a pea hen, so I dub thee Squawking Pat.

@GWashington
Some day, following the example of the United States of America, there will be a United States of Europe.

@rexGeorgeIII
And should my distant heirs inherit my Spirit and Brain, they will surely Exit such an Execrable Union. This @GWashington once begged admittance to my Table, but I could see Foul Termites crawling about his wooden teeth. I said no!

@Gwashington
I have never met @rexGeorgeIII, nor begged admittance to any man’s table.

@rexGeorgeIII
This denial is but more Fraudulent News from the Colonial Nest of Ninnies. Dolorous!

@AbigailAdams
If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice, or representation.

She was nerdy-stunning, early 30’s, with dark pinned-up hair and black glasses, clear pale complexion, and a low musical voice from ye faire isle of Britian. First stop of a yellow 2 out of Ballard, about 7:30 in the morning, yet she was as sleepy-eyed as a 3:30 pickup. Not a morning person, but still capable of witty, yet trenchant, pleasantries. I really wanted to talk with her more, but she clearly needed space, so I didn’t push it. Sure enough, she sat in the back row, always the sign of someone who doesn’t want to talk.

(Except for one guy from Everett who went all the way in back, then started a shouted conversation with me over the freeway noise. I finally pulled over so he could move up. I don’t know why, he didn’t have that much to say—I guess I was just tired of being shouted at.)

The other stop, Whale Shark’s, was on Phinney Ridge. “Ridge” is Seattlish for “View”, and “View” translates as “money.” He had the whole kit: two stories of Puget Sound and Olympic Mountains, German cars, the “My Kid Is an Honor Student at Precious Prep” bumper sticker. Dressed in technocrat khaki and an invisible “Smartest Guy in the Room” sweatshirt, he started to sit in the first row, spied her, and switched to the middle row, just in front of her. Wave bye-bye to the wife and kids, champ.

As we pulled away, he tried to strike up a conversation, despite her minimal replies. “Parry” and “deflect” are sword fighting terms that have been drafted into describing conversation, and never has it seemed so literal to me as I watched her fend him off with as little energy as politeness would allow.

He was growing desperate, and started talking about his visit to the Atlanta Aquarium, and their stupendous whale sharks. “Biggest fish in the sea: forty feet long, 20 tons, and you’re right there looking at them. Amazing. I mean, forty feet…”

We were at a red light, and I glanced back in the rearview mirror. She had had enough. With the efficiency of a master swordfighter, she pierced his heart (or loins) with the tiniest of gestures: she closed her eyes. He was frozen with disbelief for a few seconds, then turned around and stared morosely out the window for the rest of the trip.

When we got to the airport, I unloaded her luggage, and she signed her credit card slip. A good-humored look passed between us: acknowledgement of what had happened with Whale Shark, an appreciation on her part that I was letting her be a sleepy morning traveler, without asking for more. And maybe something else, a sense of kindred spirits, an acknowledgement of the conversation that could have been. A special bond, perhaps.

That night, I told Tess the story of the trip, including the exchanged look with her at the end of it. “Oh God,” she said, “you’re as pathetic as he is.”

We have a dog in our lives now, Harvey, our housemate’s pet. He’s a tall black mix of bird dog, probably Irish setter, and border collie. (Happily, he got the border collie smarts and the setter’s graceful athleticism. One is reminded of the [apocryphal] story of G. B. Shaw’s reply when a beautiful woman said, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we had a child with your brains and my beauty?” “But what a tragedy, my dear, if the reverse were true.”)

One of Harvey’s favorite games is when Tennis Ball Fetch devolves into me chasing him around the yard. He just can’t get enough of it. It’s a good workout for me, because it involves running fast with quick changes of direction—not my usual jog. But if I played as much as he wanted me to, it’d be a full time job. He’s obsessed.

This evening we were planning dinner and trying to figure out something fun to do afterwards—maybe Lemon Drops and cribbage? A movie? I was struck by an idea: “What about tennis at Seward Park?” Suddenly, we both knew that was it. We used to love playing tennis, but somehow fell out of the habit; we hadn’t played for about eight years. It took about 15 minutes of digging in the garage for rackets, and a trip to the store for non-dog chewed balls. Dinner could wait.

The courts at Seward Park have been rebuilt since the drainage project; they sit right on the edge of Lake Washington with a view of Mt. Rainier. (In fact, I played barefoot for about 15 minutes while waiting for my shoes to dry after retrieving an errant ball from the lake.) Eagles are a frequent distraction. We were very fortunate that one of the two courts was open. In contrast to our bumbling, a couple of tennis blackbelts, a man and a woman, were zapping balls at each other like throwing stars in a martial arts movie.

We didn’t play any games, just hit the ball back and forth. At first, it was hard to get past 3 volleys without going into the net or out of bounds. Or in the lake. But, we kept improving. After about 45 minutes, Tess said, “Do you realize we’ve been grinning the whole time?” What I love is chasing down difficult balls, and occasionally getting a successful racket on them. No matter how difficult, I’ll chase it. (I think chasing Harvey helped me snag a few of them.) Much later, as the court was fully shadowed, we thought maybe we should leave soon. Okay; let’s just have a rally of six shots, then we’ll go.

Too easy. Try nine. Twelve. Fifteen. We were over twenty playable shots before we finally packed it in, sore and happy. Walking back to the car, we marveled at summer. Kids dancing to hip hop, the pungent smell of pot (it’s Seattle), families picnicking on the lawns, the chiming ice cream truck with the same songs from childhood: Row, Row, Row Your Boat, Mary Had a Little Lamb…and the variety of adults and kids lining up, Asian, Hispanic, a woman in a hijab, African American, European American, 31 flavors of American.

We pulled over on the way to Flying Squirrel Pizza to watch an eagle try to snag a fish from Andrews Bay, while another eagle hovered in position to steal it. My hands were black from the decayed tape on the racket handle, and I had to wash them in the restaurant’s bathroom before paying for the pizza.

Tess and I are both fans of jazz singer Jacqui Naylor, so when we were planning a trip to Vancouver, we picked the weekend she was playing there. To say she’s a jazz singer doesn’t capture everything she does, though: she also writes original tunes that are sort of folk-rock, and with her musical and life partner Art Khu, she does something she calls “acoustic smashing”: she’ll sing the melody of one song over the groove of another, often mixing genres. For example, she’ll sing the Talking Heads’ Once in a Lifetime over Weather Report’s Birdland, or Nina Simone’s Feeling Good over Bob Marley’s I Shot the Sheriff. It works better than it has a right to; she’s the Gregor Mendel of musical hybridization.

For this concert, Ms. Naylor wore clothes. Well, she always does in concert, as far as I know; it’s just that the charming man next to us (who generously gave us a taste of his wine when we were trying to choose one) was going on about why she dressed in a certain color. Funny, I never see that much attention devoted to a male singer’s clothing. But, we also had a civil and interesting conversation with him about politics, which is apparently possible to do in Canada.

Anyway, although plagued by an elusive hum from the PA that took a few songs to eliminate, she found her groove soon enough. Her strong, expressive, wide ranging voice is always a pleasure to listen to. The most delightful song of the evening was when she sang Surrey With the Fringe on Top over Gabor Szabo’s Breezin’ (which became a hit for George Benson [which Szabo hated]). If acoustic smashing ever goes on artistic trial, this could be Exhibit A for the defense.

I think it works so well because of the geometry of the songs: Breezin’ is very horizontal, in that the notes don’t go up or down very much, and they’re also very even in length; it’s a forward-leaning, propulsive tune. Surrey, on the other hand, is quite vertical, notes going up and down, with a kind of bouncy rhythm—you can almost see the upright carriage and prancing horses, just from the music. They don’t fight for the same space. The timing of the two songs was genius: when she sang the chorus of Surrey, the quicksilver guitar riff from Breezin’ would swoop in and push it along.

However, I felt something was missing. I’d heard her in Seattle a few years ago, and I was struck by how she had different voices: there was a Rickie Lee waif, a world-wise Tracy Chapman, a tough-gal low voice, and others. One or more of them would pop into a song for a cameo, and it was like having different characters tell the story of the song. This night, it was “only” her regular Jacqui Naylor voice, which is wondrous in its own right. But getting those different points of view in one song is, to me, more interesting than acoustic smashing. I like the acoustic smashing, it’s fun, and I think says something general about the surprising shared DNA of different musics; but getting those other voices/viewpoints expands the specific emotion and world of a song.

I started wondering if I’d just imagined her “multiple voices”, because I couldn’t understand why she’d drop that, but I’m sure I didn’t. (Pretty sure, anyway—I did have an imaginary friend when I was a kid, so who knows.)

One interesting thing about Naylor was that she’d talk to fans on the break and after the show; not just “Hi how are ya,” but actual long conversations. (Maybe people she knew?) We thought about talking to her, but decided not to wait around.

Her partner Art Khu, however, was the opposite: we thanked him on the way out, and he seemed like a classic introvert: very present, but not into the schmooze. I mentioned that I thought a tune they played, “Sunshine and Rain”, would smash well with Jobim’s Agua de Berber (which I badly pronounced, and briefly mumble-sang a bar of). He nodded politely, and we said good night and walked to the door, me feeling foolish.

As I was about to step outside, he called after me: “Good point.” Musicians amaze me: in the 4 or 5 seconds it took for me to walk to the door, his mind figured out what the hell song I was talking about, extracted the relevant riff, ran it through some simulations with the other song, and decided it had enough merit to mention.

We stepped out into the cool Vancouver night and headed for the bus, full of good wine, average food, excellent music, and the pleasure of each other’s company. It doesn’t need to get much better than that.

I picked him up at airport around 4 a.m. A Hispanic man, middle height, barrel-chested, could have been either side of 50. A big duffel for luggage. He was an itinerant construction worker—cement was his field—headed for a job up in Everett. It was just him and me, so there would be at least 40 minutes to talk.

He told me about working on a high building early in his career, and how it terrified him, so he went to the library and got a book about fear, and studied it.

“Did that cure it?”

“No, I was still afraid.”

I forget how it came up—but it turned out he’d had a stroke once, and had fully recovered, except for one thing: there was a small blood clot in his neck, a vein too delicate to operate on. The surgeon told him that when it broke loose, it would enter his brain and kill him.

“He told me it could be tomorrow, it could be 20 years from now—no way to tell.”

“Do you think about it often?”

“Every day when I wake up, I wonder, will this be the day?”

The doctor told him he was okay to work, but also let him know (wink wink, nudge nudge) that he was willing write him a recommendation for disability, because he’d gotten such a lousy break. But when the man learned how much money he would get each month, “and the kind of flophouses I’d have to live in,” he decided to take his chances and keep working. It had been about 10 years so far.

I asked if the news had a spiritual effect on him. It did, but not in the way I expected:

“I used to be a Pentecostal, but when I was recovering from the stroke, I started reading about biology to learn what was happening to me. Then I started reading about evolution, and I ended up leaving the church.”

I once heard about a study that showed even highly educated people often cling to their beliefs in the face of overwhelming evidence. I loved and respected his intellectual curiosity and honesty—and his courage—how he would seek answers, and live by the best ones he could find. He was one of my all-time favorite people on the van. The conversation was pretty wide-ranging, but I still remember the last thing he said:

“People are out there trying to build financial empires, but that’s not what it’s about. That’s not what it’s about at all.”

This poem was inspired by a story I heard on KUOW about a young woman who was doing well climbing the corporate ladder. She had a presentation in front of the board, and killed it. But it nearly killed her: she kept hanging around the room, waiting for everyone to leave, so she could throw herself out the window.

How to Pray
No words prepared in advance.
Never kneel, defenestrate—
a leap of faith will incubate.
Bring a poppy, break a lance.
Our silver shield bears a whorl and a whore.
Your soul is metered in volts DC
and in how you treat the very least.
A window, cleansed or broken, is a door.
Take advantage of the gradient—
errant in earth’s intertext,
translate this dimension into the next—
your song or corpse will be radiant.

She didn’t kill herself, however; instead, she quit the job, and became a successful musician: tours, recordings, awards (I wish I could remember her name). Obviously the story isn’t about her, but the idea of “sing or die” must have struck a chord with me. No idea where the knight errantry came from–but that’s one of the most fun things about poetry, images out of nowhere.